Video: The $100 traffic ticket

posted at 2:01 pm on December 13, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

People are quick to criticize the police, and rightly so, when they act in abusive and/or illegal ways, but it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that those are exceptions and not the rule. Most people who go into police work do so in order to serve and protect their communities, and do so quietly, unobtrusively, and bravely — and not just a few give their lives in doing so each year. Occasionally, we get a glimpse of that commitment through a random act of kindness, and CBS News reports one such incident from Plano, Texas:

When 25-year-old Hayden Carlo was pulled over for an expired registration sticker by a Plano police officer, he told him without hesitation – he had no excuse.

“I said there’s no explanation for why I haven’t done it, except I don’t have the money….it was either feed my kids or get my registration done.”
The cop gave Carlo a ticket…and something else.

“I opened it up and there’s a 100 dollar bill. I broke down in my car what else could I do?,” Carlo told CBS DFW.

The officer never told anyone about the $100 gift. But Carlo’s grandfather, Billy McIntire, was so moved by the kind gesture he wrote a letter to the department.

“I get emotional when we talk about this type of thing,” McIntire says. “You just don’t find that many officers who would do this type of thing.”

We write about a lot of bad news. It’s good to offer something uplifting along with it, especially in this Advent season.

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Very true. There were times when I drove with expired tags for quite awhile before managing to renew them. I was working 50+ hours a week and raising a child as a single Mom. My daughter is grown, I am currently working 3 jobs, but my tags are paid on time every year. I don’t consider myself a Taker.

It is easy for us to judge others when our own experiences are different. It’s nice to see a cop or anyone help a person who is having a hard time keeping things together.

I still think often about that officer on the viral video who had pulled over that ranting lunatic for speeding on the highway. The officer was so calm and cool and professional as the guy was ranting and screaming from inside his SUV. I’m sure many of you have seen the video. The officer wasn’t just calm… he was firm. But he was professional. To me that was always the perfect example of a cop. Perfectly calm … yet unyielding in the law.

You said he is a freeloader. What is he taking by not having his car registered? I think you have the situation completely confused. Do you think we should have our property registered to the state? It’s a graft by the state. Nothing more.

You’ve lost the argument when you need to start fabricating your own definitions.

blink on December 13, 2012 at 4:13 PM

If a maker is late with a payment, they take the consequences stoically without complaint, they don’t whine and blubber to government employees (another class of takers) about it like the freeloader in question.

Wow! And I thought I was borderline bad for getting about 6 tickets my entire life.

dentarthurdent on December 13, 2012 at 4:08 PM

That, my man, is remarkable. Simply remarkable.

Jabberwock on December 13, 2012 at 4:18 PM

Town cop was the kid my aunts, uncles and mom beat up as children. That accounted for 12 moving violations, on a MOPED, including speeding in 45 mph zone, for which the moped was governor restricted to 28 mph.

Then later in life I went back to visit family, and after stopping at a stop sign for at least three minutes while me and the girlfriend argued over where to go for lunch, I proceeded to go, he ticketed me for failure to stop!

I went to fight the ticket, and lost, even with my girlfriend as witness…

After that, I got pulled over 57 times in a three month period for everything from over use of my blinker (using it for every lane change), to speeding on a perpendicular to the cop who was a block away road. Guess ole Monte had friends…

Anyways, only one moving violation in the last 5 years. Not too shabby. Just got to get away from people that hate you for being someone’s child.

You said he is a freeloader. What is he taking by not having his car registered? I think you have the situation completely confused. Do you think we should have our property registered to the state? It’s a graft by the state. Nothing more.

Dante on December 13, 2012 at 4:51 PM

Do you think people should be allowed to run over, hit, destroy property and otherwise cause mayhem with their vehicles? If not, then how do you prevent it without some degree of identifiable markings on the vehicle, like a license plate for which EVERYONE should have?

If a maker is late with a payment, they take the consequences stoically without complaint, they don’t whine and blubber to government employees (another class of takers) about it like the freeloader in question.

Do you think people should be allowed to run over, hit, destroy property and otherwise cause mayhem with their vehicles? If not, then how do you prevent it without some degree of identifiable markings on the vehicle, like a license plate for which EVERYONE should have?

I agree with the licensing, I do not agree with the fees.

astonerii on December 13, 2012 at 5:08 PM

How do identifiable markings or licensing prevent people from being run over, hit, or prevent the destruction of property, or prevent mayhem?

You said he is a freeloader. What is he taking by not having his car registered? I think you have the situation completely confused. Do you think we should have our property registered to the state? It’s a graft by the state. Nothing more.
Dante on December 13, 2012 at 4:51 PM

and…

How do identifiable markings or licensing prevent people from being run over, hit, or prevent the destruction of property, or prevent mayhem?
Dante on December 13, 2012 at 5:21 PM

How do identifiable markings or licensing prevent people from being run over, hit, or prevent the destruction of property, or prevent mayhem?

Dante on December 13, 2012 at 5:21 PM

First, they make it easy to identify someone who has done one of these things. This leads to those who do them suffering the consequences. This leads to people being more aware of their surroundings, as they know they are very likely to pay the consequences if they do one of these things.

There was a guy who drove a truck in Utah that had huge push bars covering his license plates. I watched him drive wildly quite frequently. One day he rear ended me at a traffic light. Instead of pulling off to the side of the road to exchange insurance information, he instead chose to simply drive off. I tried to follow to him to get his license plate to report, but as I said, they were covered. I eventually got him stopped and called the police. He was friends with the police and they threatened to charge me with stalking if I pursued trying to get the guy to pay for the damage he caused any further. The man knew it was hard to ID him, so he could just drive off. If cornered he knew he had friends to defend him. But the first aspect was the anonymity the man was allowed to have. The police never forced him to make his plates visible.

How do identifiable markings or licensing prevent people from being run over, hit, or prevent the destruction of property, or prevent mayhem?

Dante on December 13, 2012 at 6:10 PM

I understand your problem here Dante. You have difficulty identifying government when it is present, so being able to identify deterrents to bad behavior escapes your mental grasp as well. Good to know you really are just that stupid.

I understand your problem here Dante. You have difficulty identifying government when it is present, so being able to identify deterrents to bad behavior escapes your mental grasp as well. Good to know you really are just that stupid.

astonerii on December 13, 2012 at 6:16 PM

That’s twice you’ve avoided answering the question.

The answer is, as you know, that identifiable markings do not prevent people from being run over, hit or prevent the destruction of property, or prevent mayhem.

Your original response tacitly admitted this, by starting this way: “First, they make it easy to identify someone who has done one of these things.”

I’ll remind you of your ridiculous post and usual ridiculous argument (which is always arguing FOR the state): “Do you think people should be allowed to run over, hit, destroy property and otherwise cause mayhem with their vehicles? If not, then how do you prevent it without some degree of identifiable markings on the vehicle, like a license plate for which EVERYONE should have?”

Jail time, fines, forced education (traffic school) and so forth do not PREVENT all occurrences of anything. But what they do do is make the cost of doing them more costly for someone. This makes people less likely to do them. Having an easy way to identify and cause such consequences PREVENTS some occurrences of such things.

If Jay walking held a death penalty, I can guarantee you the number of times a person in any area broke that law would be FAR less than it is today, where it is rarely ever enforced. I am not saying I agree with jay walking laws, I am just saying that being held to accountability, which identification is CRITICAL prevents marginal occurrences, and if there were a near certainty of not being punished, far more people would be willing to careless.

Consequences hold people in check. Identifiability is a REQUIREMENT for consequences to be held.

“hello all, my name is Dante. I think that Indians, who held a Council and had Chiefs and many other levels of authority were a completely government free society. Please feel free to judge me by my intelligent argument!”

I mean, you cannot come to grips with the idea of deterrents. I imagine when you go into a bar, you start yelling at some guy you think you can beat up, and when he pulls a gun on you, you keep right on going and attempt to attack him, BECAUSE you do not understand the DETERRENT power of a gun in your face.

I got an idea Dante. Give everyone here your name and city so we can take some of your arguments from here and place them in an advertisement so people who live around you, that you work for and with can identify you. Since identification is meaningless, this should not be a problem right? You will not occur any new consequences because people can identify you right? It will not temper your stupidity one iota, right? Once people who know you can find out what you say online.

You’re wasting your time and blood pressure.
Dante is a hardcore anarchist. His vision of utopia is the world of Mad Max.

dentarthurdent on December 13, 2012 at 6:59 PM

I know. But it looks like I won… he stopped responding when he figured out there was no way for him to win. Calling for him to identify himself laid the argument fully on him. Saying that identification of offenders does not prevent offenses is just stupid. Not being able to identify those who do things that need to be accounted for makes it far more likely bad people will do them on purpose and neutral people will do them through negligence.

Dante is somewhat right. We should not have to keep paying the government in order to keep our own property. Fuel taxes pays for usage. Paying for the material cost of the plates should be sufficient. The point where Dante goes wrong is that peoples vehicles should not have identification markings that are required, regulated and easily identifiable. I argue they should, and the only way to keep people honest with this is to have the state regulate it.

Saying a white camry hit me is not not going to help much in tracking the person down. Saying a white camry with plates MYIDHERE from such and such a state certainly will hold that person accountable.

I agree that ID is necessary, but to me, the entire issue of fees for various things, like licensing, is a different problem. And that goes hand in hand with the whole problem of government over-stepping its bounds and grasping at more and more of our money any way they can get it.
In Colorado, our registration fees were jacked up by a Dem governor who couldn’t raise taxes (because of TABOR) to grab more of our money without a vote by the people, so he went around it by using higher fees to increase revenue.

But I would be careful about admitting dante may be right, because he will take that and stretch it as far as he can – to the point of justifying total anarchy, and then claim you’re confused because you said you agreed with him.

Sounds good to me. Good luck in working on your legislature to reduce those fees. I do not know what TABOR is, but it must be a constitutional requirement to get the people to agree to tax increases. Maybe it needs to also apply to fees and such.

Sounds good to me. Good luck in working on your legislature to reduce those fees. I do not know what TABOR is, but it must be a constitutional requirement to get the people to agree to tax increases. Maybe it needs to also apply to fees and such.

astonerii on December 13, 2012 at 7:45 PM

TAxpayers Bill Of Rights. It was voted in back in the 90s. It requires a vote of the people to raise any taxes and limits government spending increases each year to a formula that uses increase in population plus inflation. If a government entity collects more money than they are allowed to spend, they have to refund it to the people or get vote of the people to allow them to keep it and spend it.

The back door to this that some politicians have found is to jack up fees – which are not covered. A lot of government entities also go out with ballot issues on a regular basis to get permission to de-TABOR for awhile. If that entity is responsible with our money and show good justification, they often get it.

Haven’t read all the comments, but I live in Plano. Local radio said the Plano police dept. said the officer wanted to remain anonymous (and as far as i know, has) but that they would find some way to honor him. My former BIL is a Plano cop but I doubt he was the one.

Plano was named the safest city in America last year by one source, which also said it is one of the few cities that require its police officers to hold a four year college degree.

My speeding ticket was $350.00 for the Town and $450.00 for the State of NY. There were no conversations, all that was said was, “Do you know how fast you were going” I said,” No, I wasn’t looking at the speedometer”.

My speeding ticket was $350.00 for the Town and $450.00 for the State of NY. There were no conversations, all that was said was, “Do you know how fast you were going” I said,” No, I wasn’t looking at the speedometer”.

mixplix on December 13, 2012 at 8:57 PM

Never answer their questions with yes or no responses. Answer back with questions or exercise your right to remain silent. The cop is trying to get you to admit guilt to anything, and the more you talk, the more you’ll incriminate yourself, and it will be used against you should you desire to contest it. Notice that he didn’t say, “I pulled you over because you were going X mph above the speed limit.” Don’t talk to police.

How do identifiable markings or licensing prevent people from being run over, hit, or prevent the destruction of property, or prevent mayhem?

Dante on December 13, 2012 at 5:21 PM

This strikes me as odd on its face coming from you, Dante. You crow all the time about how the states are sovereign entities and that there should be no need for a federal government outside of Articles of Confederation, so why do states registering vehicles seem to bother you so much? Go to your state capital and see how fast you get laughed out of the legislative chamber when you testify in favor of abolishing vehicle registration.

No wonder it strikes you as odd; you don’t understand the point, and you’re creating straw men regarding the AoC as well. I made it as clear as I possibly could to you the other day, and it still hasn’t gotten through your thick skull: I’m an anarcho-capitalist; I don’t favor ANY government. I don’t say there shouldn’t be a federal government ouside the AoC; I say there should be no federal government, AoC or otherwise. The only thing I have said in regards to the AoC is that in many ways it is superior to the Constituion.

No wonder it strikes you as odd; you don’t understand the point, and you’re creating straw men regarding the AoC as well. I made it as clear as I possibly could to you the other day, and it still hasn’t gotten through your thick skull: I’m an anarcho-capitalist; I don’t favor ANY government. I don’t say there shouldn’t be a federal government ouside the AoC; I say there should be no federal government, AoC or otherwise. The only thing I have said in regards to the AoC is that in many ways it is superior to the Constituion.

Dante on December 14, 2012 at 10:34 AM

I don’t understand the point, but I’m not framing this as a federal/states issue. The federales have nothing to do whatsoever with it. The states do. So aside from your neoanarchist/anarcho-capitalist principles, what is your rationalization for believing that the states should not register vehicles?

For what it’s worth, I think Astonerii kind of screwed the pooch on this one. It’s not a safety issue. It’s a liability issue. The state’s argument is that if a car is stolen or damaged, there must be a system in place to make rules of liability uniform. It’s the same reason that all 50 states require liability insurance of drivers at a bare minimum. Now that’s the argument for it. You may agree or disagree, but again here as with so many other points you seem to want to argue, it’s a settled question — and you lost.

For what it’s worth, I think Astonerii kind of screwed the pooch on this one. It’s not a safety issue. It’s a liability issue. The state’s argument is that if a car is stolen or damaged, there must be a system in place to make rules of liability uniform. It’s the same reason that all 50 states require liability insurance of drivers at a bare minimum. Now that’s the argument for it. You may agree or disagree, but again here as with so many other points you seem to want to argue, it’s a settled question — and you lost.

gryphon202 on December 14, 2012 at 10:44 AM

Your ability to take things as stated and understand them are lacking here. You seriously think that lack of liability with respect to vehicles is not directly tied to safety and economics? I covered all of it. I called it accountability. I suppose you do not think they are the same?

Safety is the outcome of enforcing liability/accountability. That was what I was arguing.

If no one is held liable/accountable for their actions because they are anonymous and not identifiable, they are more likely to do bad things. Either through malice or negligence. Thus increasing the damage to society at large.

If not, then how do you prevent [people from being run over, hit, property damaged, etc.] without some degree of identifiable markings on the vehicle, like a license plate for which EVERYONE should have?

Since you say that identification does not incur any liability, consequences or otherwise… I repeat.

Give everyone here your full legal name and city or residence so we know who you are and where you are. You will not, the reason being is that you do not actually believe what you preach, that people should be responsible, held responsible, and in large part that requires identification. So feel free to identify yourself and prove that you believe that being anonymous does not in fact leave you more free to act in ways you otherwise would not.

Since you say that identification does not incur any liability, consequences or otherwise… I repeat.

astonerii on December 14, 2012 at 2:56 PM

You keep running away from the point and turning it into something else, and putting words in my mouth to boot.

Your statement wasn’t about liability. You said that markings would prevent people from being hit and run over, and would prevent property damage. This is obviously false to anyone whose brain has not withered due to drug use. Pick up a paper and read about people struck by cars, cars that have markings. Did those markings prevent the person from being struck? Of course not.

No one coerces me to register a vehicle. I understand there is an argument to be made for and against doing it, but I don’t drive. It’s moot. I can make the choice not to register a vehicle and still live lawfully by not driving. In the case of taxes, I don’t have such a choice. I’d draw that as a very important distinction.

Here’s the problem with license fees — as practiced by the State of California.

California’s registration fee has two components — the tax which is used to defray the costs of tying the identity of the vehicle to its owner in a database, and the ad valorem portion — which is assessed totally on the state’s perceived value of the vehicle.

The ad valorem portion was originally designed to fund road improvements by charging rich people in a progressive manner for the right to use their expensive vehicle on the same road as the poor person driving a beater. The problem is that, over the years, the State has diverted the excess ad valorem fee into things like The Bullet Train to Nowhere.

Here, of course, I’m talking about non-commercial use — commercial vehicles pay apportionment fees, etc which us non-commercial owners are thankfully not required to pay.

So I see a certain correctness in both arguments which have been raging here for hours — I’d rather not have to pay the ad valorem fees, since those are supposedly covered in the gasoline taxes we already pay.